Thoughts on Miss Juneteenth

I really enjoyed watching Miss Juneteenth, a 2020 indie film directed by Channing Godfrey Peoples, about a single mom (Nicole Beharie) raising her teen daughter in Texas and preparing her for a Miss Juneteenth pageant, which the mom won as a teen, so her daughter can get a scholarship to a good school. She also doesn’t want her daughter to fall into the same life she’s had as being a mother too young and getting caught in a poverty cycle or raising a kid alone, so she’s pushing for her to succeed to have better opportunities than she had, particularly to attend an HBCU like Spelman.

I really loved seeing Beharie shine in another great leading role after all of the mess with Sleepy Hollow, and how her character Turquoise was proud of her past glory but also of her current life in working at a bar and making ends meet with applying makeup to bodies at a funeral home. She played the role with a lot of heart and dimension and authenticity, and felt like a real person, she was fantastic in this film.

She had a great rapport with Alexis Chikaeze as her daughter Kai, who isn’t into the whole pageant thing and just wants to audition for the dance team and hang with her boyfriend. They really felt like mother and daughter, with a lot of warmth and closeness, as well as the mom knowing when to set her daughter straight, especially when it came time to focus on her academic studies and using the pageant to win a scholarship. Chikaneze had a sweetness to her, feeling like a kid who is testing the waters of acting grown while still being very innocent, and ends up finding a nice middle ground between being her sweet kid self and acting more like a mature young woman, especially when seeing her mother as a complex person with history and not just her mom.

I liked how warm and lived-in the film felt, based on the director’s own upbringing in a predominantly Black part of Fort Worth, Texas. The community was depicted as tight and small, albeit people knowing about each other’s business too much, but it felt genuine, and it had a side plot about the bar owner not wanting to give his place up for gentrification or white supremacy, and holding onto his place to pass on to his people, which ends up with a nice resolution.

Overall, this was a really good film, that got accolades at Sundance earlier this year, and I’m happy I checked it out.

Thoughts on To the Ends of the Earth

On Metrograph’s virtual cinema page, I really enjoyed watching the 2019 Japanese film To the Ends of the Earth, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Pulse, Tokyo Sonata). It was a really engrossing comedy-drama in which J-pop star Atsuko Maeda plays the host of a travel reality show, shooting an episode in Uzbekistan with a small crew of all men. She has this bubbly personality when hosting, but off-camera, is a lot more withdrawn and introverted. She feels totally out of her element in the country, as well as dealing with everyday sexism from locals, like a fisherman who thinks her presence brings bad luck in catching fish, or an amusement park manager who thinks she’s a child when she goes on a ridiculous ride three times in a row for the show.

I really liked how the movie depicted scenes of her isolation and vulnerability with exploring alone in the country, like feeling nervous at night as a solo woman or racing out of a bazaar when being hassled by merchants, especially when she cannot speak the language and struggles to understand and communicate with locals. And when she would be shooting scenes for the show, one could feel her guilt whenever shoots were unsuccessful for reasons out of her control, but feeling some silent blame pointed her way by men.

I wasn’t as into her musical moments, when she bursts into singing an old Edith Piaf standard in a fantasy sequence, because it felt inserted in and obligatory because Maeda is a famous pop star, and the character truly wanted to be a singer as a hidden desire. It just didn’t really fit as much for me, as these moments were the rare times that she sang, and it felt totally out of left field if I didn’t already read in the plot summary that the actress is a known singer. I got that it was part of her journey of self-discovery, but it still felt a little sudden when it happened.

It was a really rich and interesting film to watch, and I’m happy I checked it out.

Thoughts on The Sunlit Night

I really liked The Sunlit Night, a 2019 indie film directed by David Wnendt and starring Jenny Slate that I watched on Hulu. She plays a struggling artist dealing with a breakup and family drama and takes an apprenticeship far up in Norway with an curmudgeonly older artist to paint a barn, during the late summer season where it’s 24-hour daylight. I liked how quiet and contemplative the film was, and how a lot of it was of her finding peace with herself, slowly bonding with the artist, painting a portrait of a grocery store worker, hanging out by the ocean in sweaters, and having a brief thing with a boyishly dorky-looking guy there to bury his father and reminding me of Harold in Harold and Maude. Jenny Slate has a natural and warm relatability to her, a unique beauty, and a sweet oddball voice. This was just a really lovely little film to watch tonight.

Thoughts on Twenty Bucks

Last month I watched on Tubi a 1993 movie called Twenty Bucks, directed by Keva Rosenfeld, about a $20 bill that passes through various people and their stories. The movie was pretty good, a mix of Hollywood stars (Brendan Fraser, Elisabeth Shue) and indie stars on the rise (Steve Buscemi, William H. Macy). My favorite part was a story with Christopher Lloyd and Buscemi as two thieves who spend a night robbing liquor stores together. Lloyd is like the seasoned career criminal, Buscemi is the dirtbag loser. Lloyd was one of the best actors of the movie, and it was nice seeing him play a serious part and not being hammy. Melora Walters was also one of my favorites as a bachelor party stripper whose day job is working at a mortuary, I found her character varied and interesting. Fraser was the weaker part, he just seemed lost and too clean and boring for an offbeat movie like this.

Thoughts on Sidewalks of New York

Last month, I rewatched Sidewalks of New York, a 2001 romantic comedy directed by Edward Burns. I’m almost watching this in a historical context, because it is representative of the kind of late 1990s indie romantic comedies that are just full of talking and neurotic characters. It’s definitely a thing from Woody Allen movies, which carried over into the indie film boom of the 90s, and is around today in the form of indie movies about millennial hip gentrifiers obsessed with their romantic lives.

The film also takes a bit of the mockumentary style, with talking head interview clips with the characters, and it’s never established who the “documentary filmmakers” are, they just show them at random on NYC street corners talking about sex and love and relationships. The film quality is also slightly grainy and always has a bit of a shaky handheld feel to it. It comes off like HBO’s Real Sex when they would have interview segments asking random couples on the street about sex, or the first season of Sex & the City, which resembled more of a 90’s indie film with rough edges before it got more fashionable and polished.

It feels dated in part of the constant walk and talk, how characters date by just asking out random strangers they meet by chance in video stores or cafes, and how the Twin Towers are framed prominently next to Edward Burns’ head in his character’s interview scene.

It has a good cast (Burns, Heather Graham, Brittany Murphy, Stanley Tucci, Rosario Dawson, David Krumholtz) with interconnected stories tying current and former couples with each other, and a lot of talk about infidelity and messy romantic histories and the like. They flow well with each other and make the connections feel believable, like they would cross paths with each other in Manhattan.

Watching this also reminds me of seeing this around age 18 in my hometown art house movie theatre, being an inexperienced kid watching a movie about neurotic NYC adults and their confusing romantic lives. Luckily, this kind of interconnected drama has never figured in my life.

Thoughts on The Happiest Season

I was mixed on The Happiest Season, directed by Clea DuVall. It had a good cast, and I thought Kristen Stewart as Abby was decent and had really good chemistry with Daniel Levy as her best friend and Aubrey Plaza as an ex of Mackenzie Davis’ Harper.

But I wasn’t into the slapstick comedy, and was annoyed by just how Harper blindsides Abby, her girlfriend of a year, by only telling her that she’s not out to her family when they’re in the car on the way to her family’s home for Christmas. I got that Harper should come out on her own time, and why she was nervous to come out to her conservative parents. And nobody should force her to come out or be outed against her wishes.

But I still hated how she brings this up to Abby on really short notice, and lets the family walk all over her and talk down to her, thinking she’s just her platonic straight roommate, and how crappy it was. Abby is stuck there for a week, and it made Harper come off as insensitive to her. That did make it frustrating, especially since the characters are not young kids, but are likely around thirty, and should be more adult in their relationships.

So I thought the movie was OK, like around a B, but was annoyed with Harper being so immature with Abby and their relationship.

Thoughts on Zappa

I really liked Zappa, Alex Winter’s new documentary on Frank Zappa. I only casually knew some things about him, and just knew a couple of songs by him, so this was a really thorough and interesting film tracing his life as an offbeat musician leader who felt like a mix of contrasts, like an eccentric weirdo onstage who was firmly against drugs, hated hippie culture, and led a tight and focused band of veteran sidemen.

Of course, one of the things that bugged me was that he openly cheated on his wife with groupies, who was aware of it and not happy but had to put up with it. He uses being a touring rock star as an excuse, but it felt more like a side effect of the 1960s “free love” culture being more beneficial to men than women.

I really loved the part about a stop motion animator who created early music videos for Zappa and is incredibly talented in matching Zappa’s experimental music with odd claymation figures, that looked like a fantastic mix of artist collaboration. It started out after Zappa was attacked onstage and was injured, and the videos replaced the live performances for awhile and just stuck around as part of his image.

Towards the end, I loved seeing the evolution of his conducting skills, how he went from being the leader of his 1960s jazz rock fusion band at the height of the tune in, drop out era to his last concerts leading orchestras in a mix of jazz, classical, and experimental music in formal circles. It showed a lot of his range and ability to grow as an artist and with life changes and all. I appreciated this film, and seeing the tons of archival footage that Winter’s team organized for the film.

Thoughts on I Married a Witch

On Criterion, I watched the 1942 film I Married a Witch, directed by René Clair, which I heard of from the Critically Acclaimed podcast. I really adored it, it was a charming and weird premise for a romantic comedy. Veronica Lake plays a woman who got burned at the stake in the 1600s, and she and her father’s souls are imprisoned in a tree for centuries (their ashes are buried under the tree). She curses the whole lineage of the Puritan man who burned her, ensuring every marriage in his male descendants to be miserable and loveless failures.

Their souls escape the tree and they vow to continue their curse, this time on Fredric March, who is running for governor and about to marry Susan Hayward the next day. Veronica Lake, whose soul is embodied as a smoke plume that can hide in bottles, uses a fire to materialize as a beautiful woman in order to “bewitch” March and make him marry her so she can ruin his life for fun, but things take some screwball twists.

I found this really delightful, and Lake was just so funny and charming as the witch, just messing around with March as her dumb plaything. I’m happy the podcast recommended this, this was fun and offbeat and cute.

Thoughts on Irma Vep

I got the Criterion Channel over the weekend, feeling like I was long overdue to sign up as a nerdy cinephile. It’s pretty good selections, though way heavy on the classic European arthouse films that feel more like film school studies assignments. I had my fill of that when I was much younger, so I wasn’t as into that, but mostly checking out the indie/artsy films that were more contemporary.

I really enjoyed watching Beatrice Dalle’s screen test for 1986's Betty Blue, where she just tells stories of crazy adventures with her boyfriends and shady photographers, and I couldn’t tell how much was true and how much was her trying to be in character. But she just popped on camera with a lot of wild sexiness and vibrant charisma, she was totally that girl.

I watched Irma Vep, a 1996 film by Olivier Assayas starring Maggie Cheung as a fictional version of herself coming to Paris to film a remake of a silent film called Les Vampyres, dressed in a tight latex suit a la Catwoman and dealing with a messy film shoot, neurotic French crew members, confusing romantic attractions, and a stressed film director. I really liked the mix of it being artsy and modern of the time, mixing meta stuff with Cheung being largely known at the time from Jackie Chan movies like Police Story and her co-starring role in The Heroic Trio, adding Sonic Youth music and music video art etchings to silent film footage, with the casual look of the film crew and Cheung, it was all just an enjoyable hodgepodge of high and low art combined. I could see how this style would predict later Assayas films like Clean (with Cheung as a transplant to Paris but speaking way more French then) Clouds of Sils Maria, and Personal Shopper as commentaries on the French film and showbiz industry and inner workings of behind the scenes players.

Thoughts on Lingua Franca

On Netflix, I watched the 2020 film Lingua Franca, directed by Isabel Sandoval. It was a really moving and quiet indie drama about a Filipina transwoman named Olivia (Sandoval) living as an undocumented immigrant in New York City. She’s caught in a bind between trying to get a green card through a sham marriage, her passport having her deadname on it, and being unable to change it without authorities being alerted to her status. She works as a live-in nurse for an elderly Russian Jewish woman (Lynn Cohen, in one of her last roles) and she and the woman’s grandson (Eamon Farren) slowly develop a romantic relationship together.

I loved how this film spoke in quiet expressions, subtle movements, and how, like the A.V. Club review stated, her story as a transwoman and immigrant has already passed, and it’s just about her trying to get by in the present and keep her head down. As quoted from the review, “Lingua Franca is not a transition story, nor is it a story about migration. For Olivia, both of those events, seismic as they may have been, are in the past. She made it to the place and became the person she needed to be, but lost herself amid all the sacrifices she had to make to get there. Sometimes revolutions are loud, dramatic affairs. For Olivia, just allowing herself to love, to be loved, and to love herself is enough.”

The film uses news clips of 45 making threatening statements about undocumented immigrants as background noise, as well as news reports about violence against transwomen as another creeping threat.

She has a close bond with a childhood friend, Trixie, who is also a transwoman living in NYC, and they have some sweet scenes together sitting in empty church pews, speaking in Tagalog and reminiscing about their Catholic school days, when they identified more with the nuns than any male religious figures.

I’m happy that the A.V. Club recommended this film, it’s truly a hidden gem, and was touching to watch.